Thursday, March 22, 2012

Emirates, the biggest airline by international traffic, said more carriers will go bust this year as fuel costs and sluggish economies undermine profitability.

“We can reel off a whole load of airlines that are teetering on the brink or are really gone,” Tim Clark, the Dubai-based carrier’s president, said in an interview. “Roll this forward to Christmas, another eight or nine months, and we’re going to see this industry in serious trouble.”

Airline profits will plunge 62 percent in 2012 to $3 billion, equal to a 0.5 percent margin on sales, as oil prices rise, the International Air Transport Association said this week. Emirates’s fuel bill accounts for 45 percent of costs and may jump by an “incredibly challenging” $1.7 billion in the year ending March 31, according to Clark, who says he’s sticking with a no-hedging strategy rather than risking a losing bet.

“You think you’re going to win, but in the long term you always lose,” Clark said yesterday at the Gulf carrier’s head office near Dubai International Airport. “When we enter into derivatives, betting whatever it may be with counterparties who actually control the price of fuel in the first place, you have to ask yourself, ‘Is that smart?’”

AMR Corp. (AMR1)’s American Airlines is restructuring after filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and India’s Kingfisher Airlines Ltd. (KAIR) may lose its license as it struggles with cash shortages and losses. That’s after Barcelona-based Spanair SA collapsed Jan. 27, followed that week by Hungarian national carrier Malev Zrt. (MALEV)

Bailouts, Bankruptcy

Clark said some private airlines will need to be bailed out by governments in the countries where they’re based, though that will raise aid issues with the European Union and other parties.

In the U.S., more filings for Chapter 11 protection are likely, while smaller carriers operating in the Indian Ocean region and in Africa face “difficulties,” the executive said.

“This is what the fuel prices are doing,” he said. “It’s about time somebody sitting there, controlling the fuel prices, began to look a little bit more seriously at the devastation it’s causing, not only to airlines but to the global economy.”

The industry couldn’t survive a further 10 or 15 percent increase in fuel prices, especially with the European Union’s carbon emissions trading system about to add to costs, he said.

At Emirates the fuel bill, while not over budget, has “zapped the bottom line,” and that will be evident in annual results scheduled to be published next month, Clark said.

A380 ‘Mess’

Earnings at Emirates are also being hurt by the continued grounding of Airbus SAS A380 superjumbos, of which it’s the No. 1 operator, after the discovery of wing cracks. Six of the jets, which generate $50,000 an hour 15 hours a day, are out of action for repairs, idling 830 cabin crew and 160 pilots, and the carrier is having to compensate people set on an A380 trip.

“That’s had a poleaxing affect in the last nearly three months,” Clark said, estimating the revenue loss so far at $90 million. “Those airplanes are always full, they’re always popular. We’ve had multiple cancellations. We’ve had people telling us ‘Well you sold me the A380’, so we had to throw in 5,000 or 10,000 miles or give money back. It’s a mess.”

Emirates operates 21 A380s, with 69 more on order as it seeks to establish Dubai as a global hub in competition with Abu Dhabi-based Etihad Airways, Qatar Airways Ltd. and European carriers including Air France-KLM Group (AF) and British Airways.

The company is due to get five more A380s by September, and Clark said he’ll meet Airbus next week to determine whether that could change and what the solution to the wing cracks will be.

U.K. Addition

Clark said Emirates passed on an opportunity to invest in Air Berlin Plc (AB1), Europe’s third-biggest discount carrier, which sold stock to Etihad. “We decided it wasn’t for us,” he said.

Though Qatar Air is also buying 35 percent of cargo specialist Cargolux Airlines International SA, the CEO said he’s not interested in purchases in Europe or elsewhere, having ended a decade-long management accord with SriLankan Airlines in 2008 after the Asian country’s government sought more control.

“We have enough to do without getting involved in the running of other businesses, even though they are related,” he said. “We had our fair share of that in Sri Lanka for 10 years.”

As part of a strategy of tapping demand in secondary cities such as Dusseldorf and Hamburg in Germany, Emirates will select a new French destination from Lyon, Nice, Marseille and Toulouse, operating five to seven flights a week, Clark said.

In the U.K., where Emirates serves London Heathrow, Birmingham, Manchester, Newcastle upon Tyne and Glasgow, there’s the possibility of it adding a further destination which “could be north of the border or further west,” he said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Tamara Walid in Abu Dhabi at twalid@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Chad Thomas at cthomas16@bloomberg.net